A/HRC/34/51 affluent boroughs of Chelsea and Kensington in the city of London, prime locations for wealthy foreign investors, the number of vacant units increased by 40 per cent between 2013 and 2014.31 In such markets, the value of housing is no longer based on its social use. The housing is as valuable whether it is vacant or occupied, lived in or devoid of life. Homes sit empty while homeless populations burgeon. 31. Financialized housing markets respond to preferences of global investors rather than to the needs of communities. The average income of households in the community or the kinds of housing they would like to inhabit is of little concern to financial investors, who cater to the needs or desires of speculative markets and are likely to replace affordable housing that is needed with luxury housing that sits vacant because that is how best to turn a profit quickly. Financialized housing thus precipitates what has been referred to as “residential alienation”, the loss of the critical relationship to housing as a dwelling and the diverse set of social relationships that give it meaning. 32 In financialized housing markets, those making decisions about housing — its use, its cost, where it will be built or whether it will be demolished — do so from remote board rooms with no engagement with or accountability to the communities in which their “assets” are located.33 32. Many corporate owners of housing are nameless. In the first fiscal quarter of 2015, 58 per cent of all property purchases over $3 million in the United States were made by limited liability companies rather than named people, and the majority of those purchases were in cash, creating a greater level of anonymity. 34 More than 36,000 properties in London are held by shell companies registered in offshore havens such as Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Isle of Man and Jersey. 35 33. Many residential rental properties are now owned by bondholders or holders of public stock with no direct connection to properties. It is difficult to know who is accountable for human rights when the owner of housing is a multibillion dollar fund, bondholders, public stockholders or a nameless corporate shell. Tenants living in housing owned by absentee corporate landlords have complained of sharp increases in rent, inadequate maintenance and conditions as a result of substandard renovations that have been undertaken quickly to flip the home into rentals, and an inability to hold anyone accountable for those conditions. 31 32 33 34 35 10 See Department for Communities and Local Government, “Vacant dwellings”. Available from https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/vacant-dwellings/resource/c428a18b-9961-4b98-9cfeb7f120114141. See also Ed Cumming, “‘It’s like a ghost town’: lights go out as foreign owners desert London homes”, Guardian, 25 January 2015, and “Empty Homes in England — data”. Available from https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IgLJr3bfF_63Hv1w17AkhwqwsPehC6N8q8eriVLuWs8/edit #gid=0. See David Madden and Peter Marcuse, In Defense of Housing: The Politics of Crisis (London and New York, Verso, 2016), chap. 2. Ibid., p. 19. See Ana Swanson, “How secretive shell companies shape the U.S. real estate market”, Washington Post, 12 April 2016, and Louise Story and Stephanie Saul, “Stream of foreign wealth flows to elite New York real estate”, New York Times, 7 February 2015. See Transparency International UK, Corruption on your doorstep: how corrupt capital is used to buy property in the UK (2015). Available from www.transparency.org.uk/publications/corruption-onyour-doorstep/.